Goodbye
by XO'MagickMoon'OX
Summary: What really happened in the Valley of the End. [SasuNaru] [one shot]


**Just because **of my Naruto mood, of AMVs, and of my friend's offhanded comment about non-con SasuNaru. xD -**tips hat to Ting**-

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Everything was so still. Even his heart seemed to have stopped beating, stopped pulsing life through his cold veins. He should have been dead. For surely, when one's heart goes from cadencing like a snare drum to sitting still within one's chest across the span of practically no time at all, one dies. He should have been lifeless and inert on the ground. Not Naruto.

But certainly that was Naruto, strands of hair swaying in the breeze like golden grass, nearly touching Sasuke's toes at every other desultory moment. Certainly, that was Naruto, orange jumpsuit lacerated and stained (with blood). Certainly, that was Naruto… certainly… Sasuke could never mistake him for anyone else.

And everything was yet so still. No pain, where it should have been copious, budding and sprouting and shooting roots through his body. No exhaustion, when he should have been collapsed on the ground, unable to even blink for his muscles were so debilitated. No scorn, no contempt, no sorrow, no dolor, no triumph, no hauteur. Apathy. Total and complete and unending apathy. A well of ice-water apathy.

"Naruto… I…"

The clouds congregated, darkening the forget-me-not blue sky. The light thinned, framing Naruto's face, shrinking, shrinking, spinning into a delicate ray, soon to diminish. And then it was gone, and darkness accompanied the stillness, and something fell from his head. He saw his headband drop, landing with a clatter beside Naruto, and felt lightheaded, empty. The plate, etched with the Konoha leaf symbol, reflected forlorn light, and Sasuke watched it gleam for a moment before turning his gaze heavenward. Blank starless-night eyes watched as a drop, small, inconsequential, soon to be forgotten as its brothers fell en masse and it was absorbed forever into the dry earth, dripped from the clouds. It hit Sasuke's face, and like a trigger, everything spiraled into existence.

His heart thudded heavily in his chest, and his breath snagged in his throat, resulting in a strangled choking gasp as pain ricocheted through his shoulder, down his arm, burning in his fingertips, and then continued its virulent expedition through the rest of his body. He fell to his knees, the ground hard and unforgiving, jarring his legs and chilling his bones. Blood splattered across stone in front of him, but he barely noticed. Had it come from his mouth? From some nondescript wound? (He was sure he had many.)

There was a deafening rush in his ears. Was it the rain? Was it his blood? He didn't know. It didn't matter. Naruto was the cynosure of his eyes then; he saw little else, thought of little else. He didn't feel the slick, cold stone under his hands as he braced them on either side of Naruto's head, didn't feel the protest of his abused back as he leaned forward, gravitated downwards (_no one's around no one will know not even Naruto_), didn't realize when his heart had picked up its snare-drum cadence once more. The rain became an ambient drone, and the cold lips against his became the analgesic that assuaged his aches and pains. Cold, but smooth, soft, wet with rain. Sasuke's hands moved to the sides of Naruto's face, his muscles complaining to deaf ears about the extra strain put on them.

Sasuke tilted his head, slanting his mouth over Naruto's, fire exploding in his ice-water heart, torrid, conflagrant, a new sort of pain entirely. A pain to which there was no analgesic, no remedy. His fingers brushed familiar whisker marks, the barely engraved lines felt under his fingertips. They were familiar, they were home, they were something he'd never see again, only in his dreams. The smell, of rain and sweat and blood, but more importantly, of days spent training in the woods, of careless badinage exchanged quotidianly, of Ichiraku ramen. Imploringly, his tongue skimmed Naruto's parted lips, hungering for something he'd never have.

Was what he was getting worth what he was giving up?

It seemed an advantageous exchange, his fanciful, puerile life in Konoha for the very meaning of his existence, the fulfillment of his life's mission, the acquiring of power and killing of his brother and avenging of his clan. Advantageous, indeed. The sole reason for the breath he was breathing at that exact moment (despite the fact that he was rather unintentionally breathing it into his best friend's mouth) was to slay his perfidious brother. That was his reason for living.

But was it really?

Sasuke traced the sides of Naruto's face with his fingers, kissing unresponsive lips, pressing closer. The unremitting rain fell in silver sheets around them, glancing off of his back, pattering on the stone, threading through his hair and matting it to his cheeks and forehead. It was a moment in time, a moment framed by the timeless stone walls of the Valley of the End, the sentinel statues with the endless gush of water between them, endlessly pouring into the gorge and endlessly humming an ancient sorrowful tune, endlessly weeping and endlessly washing the stones clean of innocent blood.

If only other things could be just as endless. If only Sasuke didn't have to pull away from Naruto, if only he didn't have to drag himself to his protesting feet, if only he didn't have to turn away and leave without a backwards glance at his best friend. If only he realized that that _was just the point_.

He didn't have to. He didn't have to say goodbye.

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Whoooosh.. it is done. xD Thoughts?


End file.
